Changing IDE default directories used for config, plugins, and caches storage
Common cases when you may need to change the default locations of the IDE files:
- user profile drive runs out of space
- disk is slow and you want to use faster HDD or SSD for caches
- default user profile points to the UNC path unsupported by the IDE
- home directory is on a network drive
- user profile directory is not detected correctly (Java bug 4787931)
- you want to create a portable installation on a USB stick
- home directory is encrypted and slows down the IDE or causes caches corruption
- caches should be excluded from the home directory backup
- antivirus or search indexer is scanning the home directory affecting IDE performance
- idea.config.path
- idea.system.path
- idea.plugins.path
- idea.log.path
Example:
idea.config.path=c:/work/idea/caches/trunk-config
idea.system.path=c:/work/idea/caches/trunk-system
idea.plugins.path=c:/work/idea/caches/trunk-plugins
- IDEA_PROPERTIES — IntelliJ IDEA
- CLION_PROPERTIES — CLion
- APPCODE_PROPERTIES — AppCode
- PYCHARM_PROPERTIES — PyCharm
- RUBYMINE_PROPERTIES — RubyMine
- DATAGRIP_PROPERTIES — DataGrip
- STUDIO_PROPERTIES — Android Studio
- WEBIDE_PROPERTIES — WebStorm
- PHPSTORM_PROPERTIES — PhpStorm
- GOLAND_PROPERTIES — GoLand
- RIDER_PROPERTIES — Rider
- RUSTROVER_PROPERTIES — RustRover
For example: IDEA_PROPERTIES=C:\Users\USER\idea.properties
The order in which IDE will read idea.properties files is as follows:
- Environment variable (%IDE%_PROPERTIES)
- HOME\idea.properties (where HOME is the user's home directory on the system)
- IDE_HOME\bin\idea.properties
- Default IDE configuration directory
Unlike .vmoptions file handling, idea.properties file with the higher priority doesn't undefine or discard variables already defined in the file location with lower priority. If there is the same variable defined in multiple properties files, the value of the variable from the higher priority file will be used, this way you can override the defaults already defined in IDE_HOME\bin\idea.properties in another file in the IDE default config directory or defined via the %IDE%_PROPERTIES environment variable.
Changing the default location of the IDE files using the Toolbox App
If you use the Toolbox App, note that the Toolbox App provides the possibility to set a custom location for each installed IDE in its own settings.
To change the default location of a particular tool, hover an IDE item in the Toolbox Tools tab, press a gear icon, click Settings | Configuration | Custom JVM options file location | System, plugins, config and logs directory.
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It's asinine that this cannot be changed inside the UI and I have to manually edit a config file!
Worse, the information here is out-of-date.
It can be changed via UI of the Toolbox application if you are using it to manage your IDE installation: https://www.jetbrains.com/toolbox/app/ .
For 2020.x versions the default folders were changed and this document will be updated soon to reflect it. Sorry for the delay.
Related tickets:
https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-22407
https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-26855
https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-230993
When idea.plugins.path has been changed, there is an error with com.intellij.platform.images plugin:
Plugin 'com.intellij.platform.images' is compatible with IntelliJ IDEA only because it doesn't define any explicit module dependencies.
If /plugins directory and sub-dir /platform-images is created in root path with a copy of lib/platform-images.jar & resources_en.jar, the error disappears.
Simple steps if you want to change your Jetbrains IDEA Default location from C drive to some other drive(I will take D drive).
1. If you are opening for first time, open IDE, and click on "Do not import settings" and continue.
2. A welcome to IDE(Webstorm, IntelliJ, etc...) will pop up which always opens if any project is not opened.
3. Click on bottom left "Options Menu"/Settings Icon and Select "Edit Custom Properties". A input box will pop up.
4. Enter these 4 lines:
Replace "your username" with your username.
5. Save and Close the windows. Reopen the app.
6. Tadaa. It has created the folder in your given directories. Go and check and have fun. Enjoy!!
For anyone coming here looking for a way to start multiple instances of IDEA this way - on Windows you must execute idea.bat rather than idea64.exe for this to work. See IDEA-273669
Hi, am getting the error like below, even I followed the 'Device Guard' also, but still getting the same error, am not able to start the IntelliJ 2022 version. I'm having Windows 10 O.S of 64 bit one.
Error Details:
2022-12-04 22:43:59,750 [ 98] WARN - #c.i.i.StartupUtil - Unable to load JNA library (OS: Windows 10 10.0)
java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Local\JetBrains\IdeaIC2022.2\tmp\jna15202628661876121531.dll: Your organization used Device Guard to block this app. Contact your support person for more info
at java.base/jdk.internal.loader.NativeLibraries.load(Native Method)
Please help me here, what and where exactly need to exclude the dir/files in which location.
You need to add IdeaIC2022.2\tmp to the exclusions list of your software so that it allows to load libraries from this directory. It may also help if you update to IntelliJ IDEA 2022.3 where the location of native libraries has changed and they should be also signed.
sorry to bother again Serge Baranov, didn't understand this phrase -- IdeaIC2022.2\tmp to the exclusions list of your software, where exactly i need to add. please help me here. thanks in advance!
Vidyasagarareddy Agraharam Please contact your security team for assistance, they should know how to configure Device Guard to allow IntelliJ IDEA to work properly.
This does not work for me as at 2023-08-18
The JetBrains toolbox does NOT allow me to change the install location of the IDEs or the ToolBox default itsself.
Can someone from JetBrains (Serge Baranov?) confirm if the ToolBox behaviour has changed, to prevent this configuration item being edit-able, please?
Unfortunately, this is exactly my situation. I am running PyCharm on my local mac laptop and want to use the JetBrains client to connect to a remote unix server. Everything is working great, but the big problem is, that the default paths
are writing in my home directory on the remote server, where out institution has greatly restricted storage.
I tried the above suggested solution. I copied
1c7d191582b91_pycharm-professional-2023.2.1/bin/idea.propertiesto/home/user/idea.propertiesand changed and uncommented the file paths in this file toBut this does not seem to have any effect. Whereas, when I directly change the file
1c7d191582b91_pycharm-professional-2023.2.1/bin/idea.propertiesI can no longer start my remote projects as the JetBrains Client runs into a lot of errors during the start-up. Any ideas, how I could get PyCharm to let go of my user home on the remote server?Luelze Please see https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/CWM-6669/Can-use-Gateway-on-remote-machines-with-a-file-system-that-doesnt-support-file-locks#focus=Comments-27-6304753.0-0. You can use these environment variables to override IDE config/system directories:
Serge Baranov Interesting! Could you tell me where or how to define this environment variables?
Luelze Just google how to set up environment variables on the remote Linux system.
What's the variable name for Rubymine or the new Rust IDE?
Derick I updated the document. For any new IDE, you can find it out yourself by opening
<idename>.bator.shfile in thebindirectory, then searching forIDE_PROPERTIES_PROPERTY. This line will contain the environment variable name of the property that is specific to this IDE, for example,rustrover.bat:Serge Baranov , should IJ_HOST_CONFIG_BASE_DIR / IJ_HOST_SYSTEM_BASE_DIR env vars work when using JetBrains Gateway as well? (Windows client, Linux server). I added these configs to .bashrc, restarted JB client/gateway, but the two new directories are empty and ‘ps’ shows original .config/.cache directories in home still being used.
Do I have to move the contents of original directories or reset / delete anything to for these keys to take effect?
Hi, i am trying to costomize my Intellij. I tried to change my user.home config but intellij stay looking for idea.properties in my default ${user.home}\AppData\Roaming\JetBrains\IntelliJIdea2024.1\idea.properties
In idea.properties i changed as described above :
user.home=c:/dev/tools
idea.home.path=${user.home}/ideaIU-2024.1.4
# Use ${xxx} where xxx is any Java property (including defined in previous lines of this file) to refer to its value.
# Note for Windows users: please make sure you're using forward slashes: C:/dir1/dir2.
any help ? thx in advise
Redouane Najib If you want to override the location of
idea.properties, use the environment variables as documented (IDEA_PROPERTIES=C:\Users\USER\idea.properties).Hi Serge, thanks for your answer ! if anderstood you right i configure it in my environment variables like so. But still not working well :
For example if open help→edit customer properties , intellij try to open the default location : {user.home}\AppData\Roaming\JetBrains\IntelliJIdea2024.1\idea.properties:
File does not exist: {user.home}\AppData\Roaming\JetBrains\IntelliJIdea2024.1\idea.properties
The file should be located outside the IDE installation directory where it has write permissions.
Edit Custom Properties will not work properly when the location is overridden: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IJPL-37142/Revisit-.properties-file-loading-scheme .
For years I was benefiting from having multiple installations of the same IDE on the same PC, which people using Visual Studio could only envy and dream of. Now they crippled it. This whole concept of changing config settings provided in this article is under-thought. And now with the whole Community Edition cancellation low blow, the problem sticks out even more. I had installed on the same PC the Ultimate Edition UE and the Community Edition CE, obviously in separate folders and separate config. They decided to cancel CE. My CE installation was updated to "Ultimate" so that UE and CE still have separate installation folders, but share the same config folder. This is absolute no-go. I need to have separate configs, I was investigating how to do that, landed here.
First, the recommended way of changing config path is by using Help/Edit Custom and changing idea.properties in config folder. Do you see the nonsense? How could you expect changing config path using file stored in config path? This is the chicken/egg conundrum.
Second, they recommend setting environment variable IDEA_PROPERTIES. How could you expect setting two different installations of the same IDE using the same variable? Obviously not, unless you can propagate the variable directly to each exe file, but this is not described in docs. I don't think you can propagate environment variable using VM options unless it is pre-configured as system property. I tried adding this to vmoptions using -Didea.properties=c:\new_path, but it did not work.
Third, you can change the bin\idea.properties, which is not recommended, because it does not survive updates. If you look in the file it contains idea.config.path=${user.home}/.IntelliJIdea/config. Look at the value. This looks like some prehistoric remnant. If I look around, the .IntelliJIdea folder does not exist and is not used either by Windows, Linux or Mac systems. Instead for Windows it should look like %APPDATA%\JetBrains\IntelliJIdea2022.2. So theoretically we can set that. Anyway editing this file is the last resort, because I suspect it will lose the config folder on each update, which can be quite serious, so I don't want to do that.
Fourth, if the installation is managed by Toolbox, in my case yes, there is a last option by setting the config folder using Toolbox UI. Click Tool Actions, Settings, Configuration. There is a Select "button" under System, config and logs directory. Using this you can browse to new folder. After applying this it actually worked, the CE uses separate config path from UE. It created AppData\Local\Programs\IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition.vmoptions, which contains, I believe so far undocumented settings:
-Didea.config.path=C:\Users\JohnDoe\AppData\Roaming\JetBrains\IntelliJIdea2025.3CE\config
-Didea.system.path=C:\Users\JohnDoe\AppData\Roaming\JetBrains\IntelliJIdea2025.3CE\system
-Didea.log.path=C:\Users\JohnDoe\AppData\Roaming\JetBrains\IntelliJIdea2025.3CE\system\log
-Didea.plugins.path=C:\Users\JohnDoe\AppData\Roaming\JetBrains\IntelliJIdea2025.3CE\config\plugins
So I hope this guide will help other people who want to keep the IDEA Community Edition besides Ultimate Edition as usual, eliminating the low blow by Jetbrains.
For some reason, in order to restore the configuration (aka plugins) after setting this, I needed to move the `%RIDER_PROPERTIES%\plugins` directory into `%RIDER_PROPERTIES%\config\plugins` as that was what Rider somehow builds for plugins (but did not, before?). You can see that in the gear toggle “View custom VM options”.
Same for WebStorm and thus I guess all IDEs.
This is really amazing. specially when using other storage to optimize access.
I wish i could use the same idea.properties with multiple sections instead of having to use environment variables.
I found that placing the “idea.properties” in my home folder (my preferred way) will create conflicts if i run multiple different ide types (e.g. rider, pycharm, clion, etc.). specially when moving the sys path.